Jack heads off on another school camp. (His first real camping experience. Does he know how to pitch a tent?). Trekking through the wilderness of the New South Wales southern highlands gives Jack the perfect chance to think about where-the-hell this whole Year 9 thing is going. Real, unedited. Do you remember when you were 14?

21 April 1996

Time to recall all the best moments from the Meryla Pass camp on the weekend. This version: all the kinky innuendo.

I have sore shoulders and hips and a huge blister on my foot where I wasn’t used to my boots (the boots for going out and stuff; now they’re really dirty and wet). It was the best camp I’ve ever been on.

On the way down, Adrian asked the bus, ‘I wonder what percentage of time we talk about sex, masturbation and homosexuality?’ We calculated between us that 99 per cent of the time was set aside for these discussions.

‘How many people in the world at this very point in time are having sex?’ Zach joined in. Estimates were big. Millions. Tens of millions. What is the population of the world? There must be heaps having sex all the time. The idea was overwhelming. That’s a lot of sex. Everyone was having sex except for us.

I’ve never been camping before. And I spent a lot of the time trying to avoid being bagged out by Adrian (where are the tent pegs?). I didn’t want to get anything wrong (why won’t this fire light?), or do something stupid (this ripped fly-screen won’t close). I know that’s really dumb, and I should stop being paranoid about whether people, especially Adrian, like me. Because if I have a friend, he should want to be mine too.

Anyway, Friday night was the seediest night that’s ever happened. Dirty joke to dirty joke, to bondage jokes, to homosexuality, and tossing, and (predominantly) bum sex. Merkins (public hair wigs) came up again (even that would have been called sick!) And Adrian was asking for recruits to join our Merkin and Liposuction company.

Around the camp fire it got more dirty as the night went on.

‘My mother is a man!’ I declared.

‘My mum has a draw full of strap-ons’, Zach yelled. His face goes red when he laughs; he has the worst zits in Year 9.

‘Your mum doesn’t stop until she has milked 20 litres!’ Adrian finished.

I don’t know how it happened, but I got a nickname that Friday night. ‘Moisty’. And a song was created for the whole camp, using my nickname, based on that song ‘Get Down On It’.

The group wold sing ‘Get down on it’, and someone would yell ‘Moisty!’ in between.

‘Get down on it (MOISTY!) Get down on it (MOISTY!)’

The song was shouted from every hilltop in Bundanoon.

I have to tell you about the views. I seriously can’t put them into words. We walked along the clifftops overlooking the Meryla Pass. We stopped once on this rock called Wombat Hill lookout; the valley echoed voices over and over, the longest echo I’ve ever heard.

‘Fuck!’ someone yelled, and the word bounced five times before being absorbed into a giant, rude whisper. It set a bird off deep in the valley.

‘Do you reckon we just used the bird’s mating call, Moisty?’ Adrian asked. The bird called back, and flew up through the hollow made by the mountains.

‘I think we just made it really horny’, I said.

While we walked, others chatted and joked. I did a bit of thinking.

Sometimes I think life is just smiling and nodding to get someone off your back. Just words, just acting. Words can feel so nice, like ‘I love you’, or cause so much anguish, like ‘I love you’. I don’t think God works in words. You can have your fancy languages, your knowledge of Latin, but can words describe “Love”? Millions of people have tried to explain love, but when feelings become words they can mean absolutely nothing. I can’t describe the feelings inside with words. And when I do, that’s all they become. Words. A symbol for what I felt at that moment.

The highest point of the walk was the Trig Station. We stayed on the broad cliff lying in the sun, looking at the valley for half an hour, because we were, like, two hours ahead of schedule. We wouldn’t let ourselves forget that we were FUCKING AXES, and BEASTS.

Rebecca’s View was another narrow cliff overlooking Sandy Creek where we ate lunch. This valley was a wide bowl of green, rimmed by straight strips of sandstone. A thick coal seam ran through the rock. Rather than curving at the top, mountains were chopped flat like the top of the world.

‘I’d like to abseil down those cliffs into nothing’, I thought; a total speck.

I thought about Jin Wei at school. Jin is a person I have regrettably left out of this exquisite piece of work, Mr Journal. He’s a person I’ve thought a lot about lately.

I want to be more of Jin’s friend. But it’s hard because he’s in Year 10, and I’m in Year 9, and there’s certain boundaries and ways to act that restrict me. He’s a lot like me. Remarkably so, I think. Not physically. He’s Chinese, tall, and gangly with longer shiny black hair. He walks like his head is leading him places. He has excellent handwriting and a friendly smile. There’s obviously something he’s hiding. I’m hiding something also. I think we both act to cover our feelings, and ourselves.

The other day I was hanging around with Jin on the stairs after orchestra practice waiting to be picked up.

‘You can tell me anything’, I said to Jin. He plays percussion, I play violin. ‘You can confide in me’.

I could tell he was bare, and naked and covering up. ‘Thanks’, Jin said.

‘I guess I have to confide in you for you to confide in me’, I told Jin. He smiled and drummed the stairs with his fingers.

‘I guess’, he said.

Maybe I should give him this. Then he’d know what’s going on in my head. Jin is really cool. Really nice. I remember on Friday afternoons, back in Year 7, he used to hear all my compositions, in a room before his music lesson.

I would have to tell him more than what’s in this book. Because I’d come across as a full-on queer! I’d have to talk about the beginning, about realising for the first time this thing in Year 7. No choice. No turning back. The months of confusion. Thinking. Trying to deny it. Trying to think of girls I knew, women. Hell I didn’t want to be a campus faggot. I wouldn’t fit in. But I’m accepting it. I’ve thought about lots, about religion, and conformity; what others don’t think about until they’re 40. And then I fell in love. Haven’t told anyone. Maybe Jin would understand.

He wants to start a band.  I think I’ll say yes.

We got to the second camp site at 2pm. We had walked 17.5 kilometers in 6 hours. Our group had the longest route, even though the other groups thought they were so much better because they’d gotten lost, and gone to the lakes, and crap like that.

That night, sitting between the tents. ‘Who keeps a diary?’, Kev asked.

‘Diaries are gay’, Adrian said.

‘Yeah. Spastic’, Zach said.

I kept my mouth shut.

Go to Episode 7: Jack Jacks Off

1 Comments

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January 18, 2010 4:23 pm

westius

I like the compound interest formula in the post-it note in the final picture! When do we get to hear about Jack’s love of maths?